Forums » Secret Class

Necromancy and pleasing a crowd

    • 25 posts
    April 17, 2018 2:38 PM PDT

    I have watched the class video baz posted and been thinking alot about Crowd Control, the Necromancer, and the balance of classes in the game. I keep coming back to the fact that first, I love CC. I loved the Enchanter in EQ. I loved my Controller in City of Heroes. I loved my Sorc in DAOC. Secondly, why do we only have one CC focused class? We have 3 tanks, 3 healers, and a multitude of DPS.

    I feel (as I mentioned in another thread) that Necro is a perfect fit for a second CC focused class. By that I mean a class that their primary job is CC. Additionally, I personally feel like the concept of what necromancy, and thus a Necromancer has kind of lost its way over the years. Necromancy is by definition 'the supposed practice of communicating with the dead, especially in order to predict the future'. The key here being the dead part. I don't think disease and poison (typically expressed as DoTs) is necessary to represent Necromancers as a class in a game. Why can't the focus be more on death magic (and thus manipulating/stealing life)?

    Based on the idea of a CC focused Necromancer I started brainstorming what sort of spells they would have.

    Direct Damage
    Single Target - Lifetap
    Single Target - Death bolt (undead immune)
    Single Target - Unravel (anti-undead only)
    DoT - Drain Life

    Root - Grasp of the dead (damage can break)
    Fear - Haunting Spectre (behaves mechanically like a mez/sleep, broken by damage)
         Fears and maybe even roots could include lines for Single Target, AOE, and PBAOE, as well as short duration fast casting versus longer casting long duration.
    Off tank pet - Animate the dead around you for short duration extra pets (or even carry componants for this)
    Stun - Shock of Horror (Stun living targets), Rigormortis (Locks up the body of undead)

    Resist - Death type magic
    Resist - Cold
    Granted proc - Lifestealing touch
    Damage Shield - Shroud of the grave

    Anti Heal - Weeping Wounds (reducing healing effectivness)
    Stat reduction - Entropy (reducing Str/Stam)

    Share Health
    Share Mana
    Mana Drain
    Heal Undead
    Charm Undead
    Persistent Undead Pet
    Ward damage

    This is not meant to be a comprehensive list by any means, but a framework for a class idea.

    Granted you probably won't want more than 1 CC in your group, but that is also often the case with tanks and healers. There are of course exceptions. Imagine you have just one tank and one healer. If there are a lot of adds a group that does happen to have 2 CC's could easily keep the fight under control to only be fighting one at a time. They could even manage to pause entire encounters long enough for a single healer to med up and be ready to go again without having to find a 'safe place' to rest.

    • 1665 posts
    April 17, 2018 3:52 PM PDT

    I like where you're going, I have very similar opinions about the necromancer class.  I loved the class in Everquest, it was by far my favorite class I have played in any MMORPG.  I feel that it would be cool if the necromancer were a hybrid CC, Healer class.  Much of what you listed above is what I envisioned, but also the ability to share their life with others and heal themselves and others through lifetaps.  It would be sort of like how some classes may be healers, but are better damage, or tanks but are better damage.  Necromancer would be a CC but better healing than other CC.  They wouldn't be able to necessarily replace a healer in a group (except maybe if the group is doing easy content), but they would make an excellent secondary healer.

    So basically this would give another CC that wouldn't be a dps/CC class like the chanter (and presumably the bard), but would be a healer/CC.

    • 1458 posts
    April 18, 2018 7:56 PM PDT

    Undead CC seems very possible.  We know revanants will be fairly prominant.

    • 25 posts
    April 20, 2018 9:09 AM PDT

    To clarify for any who are confused, I am in no way proposing a CC class that can only CC undead. That would be a shockingly bad class design.

    The roots and fear (mez) would work on any target not immune to that type of CC. Certainly there could be a difference where some mobs are immune to the Necro fear and not Enc mez, and of cource vice versa. But overall my proposal would be that for the most part they are two different choices for a CC class much like you have 3 different choices for tank.